Choice of pork: ribs on roast, legs for jelly

What slice cut into steaks? What will make a good baked ham? What is suitable for goulash?

To get an answer to these questions, we invited to the culinary studio Deli our friends from the Russian ecofarm Mustard glade.

The owner of the farm, Alexander Brodovsky, introduced us to a man who knows everything about meat. The German Sven Lindauer is a jack of all trades. At 26, he brilliantly owns three professions — a farmer, a butcher and a cook.

And to the question which of them is the main one, he answers: “All three”.

Alexander and Sven brought with them a 140-pound pig carcass.

And right before our eyes, Sven completely cut it, then cooked pork cheeks, sausages-bratwurst and stuffed leg zampone, He also told us about eco-farming, eco-meat in general and eco-wine in particular.

Parts of pork carcass differ in structure: softness or rigidity, the presence or absence of fatty layers. “It’s important to remember: the higher the proportion of connective tissue — the tendons and ligaments, the longer the heat treatment time will be,” says Sven. — Meat is the musculature of the animal. If the muscles worked a lot, then the meat turns out harder. «

To understand what a piece of meat is in front of you is to cook it correctly: grill or bake, stew, or put into mincemeat for sausages.

This is the upper part of the front leg, to which the so-called “fat cheek” adjoins — the lower piece of the pork cheek. The bottom of the scapula is the same knuckle(Hachse), served in German restaurants.

Diced fillet of scapula is ideal for goulash or roast with cracklings.

It is used for boiled ham, sausage, aspic.

Perfect for roast. If you cut the neck into pieces, you get the best steaks for frying in a pan or grill. Meat on the bone is suitable for roasting in the oven.

Cut the neck into large chunks — and make kebabs.

Dark, rather elastic meat.

Cut into flat pieces 3 cm thick, it serves as the basis for the so-called cutlets on the bone (not to be confused with chopped cutlets!). Chopping rib piece, you can cook excellent roast.

From meat, separated from the bones, you get steaks and escalopes.

She thick place or back loin.

This is a tender meat that is cooked with a whole piece (baked) or cut into slices.

It makes good steaks.

You can also chop this piece for goulash.

The sliced ​​meat is suitable for grilling, along with ribs — for frying in the oven.

Large pieces of brisket can be boiled or smoked (in Russia the word “brisket” is more often called just a smoked piece of peritoneum).

Peritoneal meat is also used in grilled sausages. (Bratwurst).

This muscle is not responsible for the movement — it just supports the spine from the inside: the work is not too hard. Therefore, tenderloin is the most tender part of the carcass.

It can be cooked whole or cut into 4 cm thick scallops for frying.

Subcutaneous pork fat.

It is cut into pieces, preserving the skin, and salted, smoked, boiled, baked.

Sliced ​​meat with bacon is suitable for roast in the oven, and in the form of thin large pieces — for pork roll. Ham — the perfect piece in order to make it jerky (prosciutto, jamon, knochnshinken — each nation has its own traditions). But the ham steaks are dry, because there are no fat layers in it.

If the ham is cut, we will see interesting pieces of meat: for example, round and absolutely lean «nut«, Which, unfortunately, is very easy to overdry, or a small, but especially tender flat piece, called in Germany» a piece for the mayor » (Bürgermeisterstück).

Upper back leg.

Like a spatula, this is a classic piece for cooking German knuckles.

The bottom of the pork legs are boiled or grilled.

They are indispensable for jelly.

In Italy, the skin of pork legs stuffed with minced meat and boiled in broth — it turns out zampone, classic christmas dish.

Meat with heads goes to brawn. Very tasty cheeks, stewed in broth, but they are not easy to find on sale: to prepare the dish for the whole family, you will need cheeks from several pigs, so the butcher usually keeps them for himself.

But buy tongue (it is boiled) piglet and ears (boil or bake) is not difficult.

Sven, you are both a farmer, a butcher and a cook.

What does this give you?

Evaluating a meat dish, you appreciate the art of these three people! A hundred or two hundred years ago, this combination did not surprise anyone. The same person raised an animal, slaughtered it, knocked the carcass down, cooked sausages and sold them in his shop.

As a rule, by noon the trade was curtailed, and by the evening everything bought was eaten. And so every day.

He fed about ten people, no more, but at the level of the village, a small community, it was an indispensable, one-of-a-kind artisan, a true professional in his business.

The last hundred years, the owners of large meat companies have sought to increase profits at lower costs. There has been a polarization of the professions. Now the majority of farmers are no longer responsible for cutting carcasses, or for the preparation of all kinds of meat products.

And this, alas, affected the quality and taste of meat.

The production of meat is the work of many, many people, everything is interconnected, and everyone in this chain has its own task.

In order to fully control the quality of meat, I must have at least a basic knowledge of it. I have to talk with everyone who takes part in the process of its preparation, in their language: with the peasant in the language of the peasant, with the cook in the language of the cook, with the butcher in the language of the butcher.

What does a regular cook talk to a farmer or a butcher? First of all, about the quantity and price.

And I’m talking about the breeds, about the peculiarities of growing animals, about cutting it — I understand this, I find it interesting. Personality plays a very important role here, because the work takes place through constant communication.

So I always know exactly what quality in each case I can get.

Sven worked with pork from Mustard glade. Pigs, which keeps on his farm, Alexander Brodovsky, belong to the elite breed dyurok.

They grow on free grazing, and from wind and heat they hide in the woods or in mobile houses without a floor.

You work in the eco-farm of Karl Ludwig Schweizfurt in Bavaria, advising workers of the Russian eco-farm Mustard Glade.

What is ecological meat different from the usual, from the supermarket?

Taste, structure, quality in general.

The highest manifestation of quality is marbling. Marble meat becomes due to the web of the thinnest fat interlayers — they give the taste, it is the highest quality criterion.

By the way, marble can be pork, and lamb, and beef, and even a bird — capons and fowls.

And how to get a good marble pork?

Marbling is, firstly, a breed. Secondly, food.

Third, the ability to move, build muscle mass. Fourth, it is age.

The best age for a pig is ten to twelve months when marble veins are formed. Most of the pigs whose meat lies on the shelves of the stores were slaughtered at five months. During this time, only the skeleton and muscles grow, fatty layers cannot even appear theoretically.

But after five months, feeding a pig is not profitable, since there is no longer any significant increase in muscle mass, only the quality of meat improves. Therefore, only a pig raised on an eco-farm, on free grazing, has a chance to live up to a year. Her meat will be marbled.

Another important point — the correct, stressless slaughter of the animal.

What does it mean?

The pig is stunned with electric shock, and she falls asleep. Then you need to quickly cut the artery around your neck and draw blood. In an animal that was clogged in this way, the muscles are very relaxed.

If the pig is crammed under stress, the butcher feels it right away: the meat is much more solid and there is a lot of liquid oozing out of it.

When cutting, Sven tries to do without a saw — bone dust remains from it.

Often you can not chop, not saw off, and go with a knife from the side, walk at an angle on the cartilage.

You often call yourself an artisan.

What sense do you mean by this concept?

For many, handicraft work is the opposite of artistry, something low, averaged, gray. But in the country where I was born and raised, the word “craftsman” (Der Handwerker) literally means «working by hand». This is a man who himself raised an animal, manually made sausages, or, say, manually forged a cast iron pan (look, I’ve got a handmade frying pan in my hands, I brought it from Germany).

In the concept of «craftsman» is the highest beauty, because manual labor — the most perfect!

And the second point — the artisan is responsible for the whole process from the beginning to the end, and not for any one link in the chain-process.

It is very important.

If you are a cook (butcher / farmer / baker), you must master all aspects of your profession. The division of labor in terms of time and function is industrial-industrial production, in which the real craft dies, is replaced by fiction.

Industrial-industrial production has the right to exist, but it should not destroy traditional craft and high-quality products.

Sharing my knowledge about the production of organic meat, I try to sow seeds that will someday become flowering trees. That is my mission. I want to shout to the whole world: “Listen, there is another way!”.

I serve my craft and, moreover, almost every day I myself learn things that I could never find in any book.